


We were one, we were golden (forever, you said)

by solesism



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Can read as gen or ship idc, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 09:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20655233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solesism/pseuds/solesism
Summary: Obi-Wan walks out into the desert as the first sun sets.





	We were one, we were golden (forever, you said)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Michael Schulte— You said you'd grow old with me

Obi-wan walks out into the desert as the first sun sets. 

He brings nothing but a bottle of water. He leaves his lightsaber, halfway hoping he’ll get eaten by the Jawas or something— it would probably be better than what he deserves. But he knows himself, knows that he won’t die of dehydration in the next few hours but that it will be awfully uncomfortable, so he brings a bottle of water. 

His fingertips have split, and the skin over his knuckles is red and papery. The first week or so on Tatooine he had had splitting headaches, which he couldn’t even self-heal with the force; the only help was pressing the heel of his hand between his eyes as hard as he possibly could. He didn’t leave the house, then. Or eat. He may have slept some. He doesn’t remember. All he remembers is the pain in his chest and the pain in his head fighting for attention until the pain in his chest spread into his fingertips and the soles of his feet, and when it cleared enough for him to stand, the headache was gone. 

When the second sun sets and the sky turns from fire to indigo and he can no longer feel the nearest town, he walks to the top of a dune. He lays down on his back, crosses his ankles, clasps his hands over his stomach; he looks up at the stars. He wonders if the constellations have names, have meanings, if the slaves have drawn star-maps with their eyes and passed them around in coded song. He wonders if Anakin knows— _knew_ those songs. He can pick out Mon Cala and Yavin, and what he thinks is Coruscant (Anakin had _despised_Mon Cala. _It’s not right,_ he said, arms crossed, eyeing the still waters with distrust. _That much water._). Naboo is just below the horizon. 

He closes his eyes. He closes his eyes and focuses on the warm sand and the cool wind humming through the hills. He focuses on the sand, and then he pushes deeper. He feels every shiny beetle, every long-legged mouse. He feels a lizard, digging her way out, carrying eggs in her mouth. To his left, somewhere, is a cactus older than he is, arms up to the sky like it’s praying. An owl the size of his fist perches on it, listening, waiting.

Deeper down, he feels ancient rock, rock that was here before its people and will be here long after they’re gone. 

Below that lies an underground river. The water in it is ice cold and will eventually make its way through the canyon, eight days away. The water in the canyon is just a muddy trickle, but there is a bustling city built around it. 

At the furthest reaches of his power is an ancient, scaled, powerful thing. It has been asleep for thousands of years, waiting, dreaming. One day it will wake up. He hopes he isn’t there when it does. 

He feels each minuscule point of force-light, comforting and familiar and uncaring. One light blinks out as a fox catches a scorpion. He gathers them all in his arms, even the smallest bit of life he can gather from the creature curled around the core of the planet, and he breathes. 

Even though it is only his tenth day on this planet, the force signature he has gathered warms the pit of his belly like a star. It hurts. It burns and freezes and soothes and claws all at the same time. The pain in his chest fades into it; he can’t tell if it’s easing or getting worse. 

He holds the life of a desert planet, and he remembers. 

He remembers his force-link with Anakin. The desert tugs on that blood-drenched rope and calls it _son_. He remembers the first time he came here, with Qui-Gon, and he remembers the way Anakin glared at him for the first year and a half of their partnership. He remembers how he cried at night, in the beginning, a slave-child with no mother left and no father to begin with, and how he pretended not to. Though he cried silently, Obi-Wan could feel him even then, shaking while Qui-Gon was asleep and Obi-Wan was pretending to be. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t remember his parents. He had grown up in the Jedi temple, not allowed to form attachments, though they did anyway. He remembers how he was so proud that the only person he cared about was Qui-Gon, proud that he had taken every _human_ part of him and put it in a locked box til there was only Jedi left. He remembers the first time Anakin hugged him— sobbing, loud, with dirt on his cheeks and feelings too big for him to hold and unaware that Obi-Wan had never been hugged before. He remembers Anakin— still only a child, still barely coming up to Obi-Wan’s chest— pressing his face into his robes and he remembers hesitantly, lightly placing his hands on his shaking back. 

He remembers feeling afraid, so afraid, and angry at Qui-Gon for dying and leaving him with a traumatized child to raise, and he remembers Anakin watching him from across the room with his dark eyes and wishing that someone, _anyone_ would take him away. He remembers Anakin’s eyes growing even larger and two high spots of color instantly appearing on his still-chubby cheeks. He remembers Anakin running out of the room. He remembers feeling a different kind of fear— a blood-chilling terror at being thrown away— _again— the detonator_— and he remembers the realization that those weren’t his feelings. 

He remembers finding Anakin curled up in the darkest corner of the ship, wedged firmly in a space too small for him to get into. “Don’t give me away,” he had whispered. “Just take me back home. Please.”

Obi-wan had closed his eyes and found the tiniest, most delicate thread of force-bond he had ever felt. Qui-Gon’s was next to it, thick and bloody and frayed and still raw. He remembers reaching out through it and thinking as hard as he could _you’re safe here_. 

When he opened his eyes, Anakin had stopped crying. He’d wiped his grubby face on his grubbier sleeve and sniffed.

“I promise,” Obi-wan said, crouching down. 

Anakin nodded. “Okay.”

He remembers how, for the first few years, Anakin would freeze in blind terror every time he tripped or said something too loud. He remembers how he had found hiding spots even Obi-wan himself hadn’t known about in the temple, because he would hide when he did something that had the _possibility_ of being wrong. He remembers Anakin flinching and covering his face with his arms when he reached up to grab something off a shelf too fast. He remembers how _proud_ he was when Anakin, clumsy from a growth spurt, dropped a plate and shrugged, said _whoops_ with a sheepish grin before sweeping up the piece and putting them in the trash. 

He remembers the way that Anakin scoffed at the Jedi’s rules, living with wild abandon and loving with every atom in his body. He remembers the day Anakin finally got too tall for him to rest his chin on top of his curls, and how he never let him live that down. He remembers Anakin kneeling on the floor of his quarters, back pressed against Obi-Wan’s knees as he carefully twisted a padawan braid into his hair, still practically a padawan himself. 

He remembers how Anakin felt, still desert-wary and hardwired for survival even after so many years away from Tatooine. He felt like the desert Obi-Wan clutched now, even on the banks of a river of lava. They used to be able to feel each other from opposite sides of the galaxy, able to send feelings and messages and jokes; once, he’d tripped Anakin from light years away, and Anakin had given an indignant cry and flicked him in the forehead in response. The place where Anakin should be was still a hole, gaping and raw and bloody. It had been wrenched out on Mustafar in the split second before he’d yelled _I hate you_, and the tearing had felt like losing a limb. Phantom pains and all.

He wonders if he takes every light and presses it together as hard as the core of a blue star, wraps it up in all the hurt and love he has to give, if it will condense into a too-tall too-loud too-angry man with an easy smile and nimble fingers. He can nearly smell him, then, hard-baked earth and a constant smear of motor oil. If he wishes hard enough, if he does _better_, if he holds his khyber crystal in the palm of his hand and squeezes til he bleeds, then maybe— _maybe_ slender fingers will curl around his, and hands he would know at the end of the universe will gently pry his fingers open and clever thumbs will press into the cuts and heal them from the inside out— maybe Anakin will roll his eyes and tell him to stop being dramatic and grab his wrists and pull him _home_. If he’ll press his chin to the top of Obi-Wan’s head. If he’ll stand next to him, shoulders and palms touching, and feel more than any Jedi has a right to. 

But he opens his eyes, and it’s just him and the cold, cold desert. 

Obi-wan doesn’t know how long he stays there, lost in memory and grief, but he’s cried himself out. All the sun-baked heat of the dunes has been leached away, and he’s nearly too cold to move.

He looks up at the stars. Tatooine doesn’t have a moon. 

(The first time Anakin had seen a moon, he’d laughed.)

He drinks the water he brought, shivers for a few moments, then dusts himself off and begins the long journey back. The hole in his chest is smaller now, more manageable, though by morning he knows it will be back and ragged as ever. 

But for now, it’s enough for him to fall asleep.


End file.
